Notes on Living by Lauren Cerand

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Head Butler says, "she’s everything amusing and smart about the world from 1895 to 1929, plunked down in our own drab time," and Oprah.com observes, "Lauren Cerand is a figure from another era, a sophisticated lady who wears sparkly things, eats fabulous feasts, dances at swank cocktail parties until dawn, and hobnobs with New York City's artsy elite." Flavorwire, when compiling a list of the twenty "Most Stylish People in Literature," noted, "This publicist is the epitome of literary elegance."

I've been collecting my thoughts on art, politics and style here at Lux Lotus since 2004. Lux Lotus doesn't mean anything specific; I made it up. I (now infrequently) write about travels, clothes, and flights of fancy, as well as experiences I've recently enjoyed, and what I think that I might like to do next.

I answered my own "PEN Ten" in my final installment for the politically-inspired Proustian questionnaire series, which continues with new guest editors as I increase my leisure:

Obsessions are influences—what are yours?Gaze, the hedonistic luxury of smoking, fur on bare skin, taxis in unfamiliar cities, the brightness of stars as night falls in the desert, cloth napkins, elaborate fastenings, extremely rich pleasures in very small quantities. Just a few.

20x200, my favorite site for budding collectors (and a popular source of new treasures, both for myself and others, interviewed me in their 5+5 series:

2) Studio, All Over Coffee #392, by Paul MadonnaOne of the things that I like most about old paintings is the fact that they ask the viewer to do some work, decode the references, and understand the relationship between the elements and their sophisticated interplay of meaning. I speak to audiences at conferences and universities several times a year about publishing in the digital age, and this year, I've resolved to avoid the terms "authenticity," "storytelling," and "community" (unless it refers to a physical place). Why? Because, as this eloquent composition reminds us in an aside that, upon reflection, sums up the whole enterprise, I am not an industry. Neither are you.

And in Rob Fields' Dynamics 15 project on 2015's trends, I discussed the idea of reactionary eloquence as one possibility.

My old apartment was for entertaining, and at one point, I was cooking elaborate dinners for ten, by myself, every weekend. At the last one I hosted, though, there was a chef. I thought it would be useful for my work to have a space into which I could welcome guests, lots of them, and it was. If you subscribe to the theory, and why not, that we are always responding to, and shifting energy around us, then I can say that leaving that place was as much about the noisy neighbors who made it impossible to stay as it was about being time for me to go on a personal level. My new apartment is much smaller, cozier, even more dimly lit; I often sleep in and spend my lazy late mornings and early afternoons looking out at the garden with a cup of tea, and a blanket on my lap. Friends who call think I must be speaking to them from another country. Almost no one has seen this place. Almost no one will. When my short lease is up in July, I'll move on. But for now, this little moment, this cocoon, this little suite of time and space that is intimate and wholly my own, suits me very well indeed. All of this is to say that I donated so many things –– art, gowns, jewelry, 1920s cocktail glasses right out of The Thin Man era –– to John Street Church's annual tag sale that a moving company had to handle it. That's later this week, October 16-17 (10:00AM-4:00PM) at John Street Church in Lower Manhattan.

Not too long ago, I was reading the website of a country psychic who spelled out, in admirable terms, his commitment to readings with integrity, and furthermore, his philosophy that what we struggle to cling fast to is not meant for us, and what we yearn for is already ours. Simplistic, sure, but I'd never thought of it in such stark terms, too busy playing tug-of-war or digging in or whatever approach to being tenacious and driven I'd settled on for that particular day of the week. For the past year, I've had a bad neighbor problem. In New York, that's really something, because they're in your psyche; your inner sanctum. And my oasis is a truly private world. It sounds really silly now but up until last night I refused to concede because of my beautiful drapes. They're floor to ceiling, custom made to my specifications, to look like a slow boat bringing back treasures; "Ah," said the man measuring the fabric, "you'd like a ripple fold." I've never seen anything like them, how they fall and pool in sinuous columns, and I couldn't imagine leaving them, although it's only a rental and I knew it never forever. Last night I realized I have to move, and today, I was impatient, and I said to myself, "Let the magic work," and then, just like that, it worked, but inside of me. I went in and talked to my management company, and I'm going to move to a different apartment in the building. It sounds like nothing, but there it is: a major, seismic shift, that made me feel as though a physical burden was lifted gently, quickly, from my shoulders.

I spent all summer wearing caftans and when fall arrived, I didn't have any clothes. The other night I ordered most of the Isabel Toledo Collection for Lane Bryant, four or five black lace dresses, and I felt around my purse for the tube of red lipstick I'd hardly applied, and I thought about how people always ask me what's going on when I don't wear it, and sometimes I don't for long stretches, and their surprise puzzles me and then I caught my own reflection on the train tonight, and thought, there you are.

Today I ordered a steak and a martini for lunch at my club, in my black lace dress, and thought: Monday, I'm going to eat you alive.

The best part about ordering the clothes is that the site was down and so I called up and, ordering over the telephone, when the operator repeats everything after you, and he's a man, and you say cigarette pants, and he says cigarette pants. I'll always think of that when I wear them: the space between our cigarette pants.

Since I'm listing the silly reasons I haven't written in such a long time, here's a big one: I haven't had a great love in ages.

A friend told me today that she dreamed last night that I was a jazz singer, in a very vivid way, and thought to herself, "Finally, I understand why she has all those gowns."

There's something particular about the last week of summer, the way that it casually, lazy as the heat is, eager as it feels to squeeze the last drop of life from the one true season of possibility, sandwiched in between rebirth and harvest, tallies the score.

This year, I decided not to travel, in what I would consider a serious way, a week or more in a place I've not been before (far and away the thing I spent the most money on last year, besides rent and health insurance), and by extension, write, because I only indulge myself when I am in some other place, free of the constraints of daily routine. My source of strength and the cool well of refreshment is the unknown of a new place, especially one that reverberates with possibility, unfamiliar streets untapped. I love walking by the river in Paris, close to the apartment I often rent on Rue de Lille. I live about the same distance from the river in New York, at the very tip of lower Manhattan, although I seldom walk along it. I feel like I already know where it leads.

I said that I would write all year, but I haven't had an experience that I felt came to meaningful fruition. Mostly, I've worked. Glamorous, savored, memorable nights. But that feeling, of seeing the bus pass in Edinburgh, headed to a place called "Hunter's Tryst," or the fabled old streetcar in New Orleans, bound for desire –– I wanna go there –– I haven't enjoyed that luxury in some time. The breathing room of possibility, of leisure, to wander.

I spent a couple of weeks this summer in a seaside village on Cape Cod, and worked the whole time. Joke's on me, I guess. I longed, occasionally, for men I used to know, but less and less as the days went by. I can visualize exactly who's right for me, and I don't want to be busy that night. And it's been a hard year, too. Friends lost. This short life, this tough world. A realization that I can no longer compromise on certain things, primarily giving more of myself than an ordinary person can expect should be returned. Used to be me. I'm different now. More and more, I feel the glimmer of something deep and elemental that I've missed, slowly surfacing, the "me" in me, if only I can nurture it now in a way I didn't even understand before. One year, I went to Reiki every week for a whole summer and the practitioner explained her work as as a subtle energetic shift. The first session, I had a vision of myself as a bride, tumbling dark waves, crimson lips, smiling a knowing grin. For years, I was afraid to cut my hair, that if I didn't grow it out to what I had seen, it wouldn't come true. I know better now, and on my very last night in Provincetown, I cropped it short like a photo I'd seen once of Sara Murphy, looking over her shoulder, swathed in pearls on a beach in the South of France.

I was reading Dubliners the other night, and, in a story about two men acting in bad faith, there it was, a lifeline: Experience had embittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left him.

Hope is a jewel, worn close. I'm home early, looking at my fall calender, thinking of openings. Maybe this is a subtle year: watch the tide wash back, reflect, let things take shape. That, I can do.

It's Saturday night and I'm at home catching up on deadlines. The first week back from the holidays, and it's a crush. In between projects, I fantasize about where to sneak off to for a very long weekend, entirely off-the-radar –– San Juan? Key West? Havana? I have much of the world to see. Meantime, dates in my diary:

On January 29th, in the Strand's Rare Book Room, I'll discuss The Allure of Chanel(Pushkin Press) at 7pm, as part of a chic panel.

On January 31st, my pet, Café Society, makes its debut. The list filled in less than an hour (hint: club members get first crack).

I'm on the benefit committee for "The Common in the (Eternal) City," May 21-- a little Rome in New York. Tickets now on sale.